Arab media have reacted cautiously to the beheading of a US civilian on a video apparently issued by an associate of Osama bin Laden, with some newspapers conspicuously playing it down or even ignoring it.

Opinion makers condemned the execution of Nick Berg, a US businessman who had been kidnapped in Iraq in April. The main pan-Arab satellite television channels broadcast an edited version of the video, but omitted to show the decapitation itself.

"This shows how base and vile those who wear the robe of Islam have become," said Abdullah Sahar, a political scientist at Kuwait University.

The video was released on the internet yesterday, but appeared too late for columnists in the Middle East to comment. But many Arabs said today that the grisly execution, attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, surpassed the US military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, which has been the top story for the past 10 days in the Middle East.

"We were winning international sympathy because of what happened at Abu Ghraib, but they come and waste it all," Mr Sahar said of the militants responsible.

In the video, masked men said that they were taking revenge on the 26-year-old Berg, who came from Philadelphia, because of the abuses at the Baghdad prison.

Mustafa Bakri, editor of the weekly Al-Osboa newspaper in Egypt, said Berg's execution will only harm efforts to expose US offences against Iraqis.

"Such revenge is rejected," Mr Bakri said of the execution. "The American administration will make use of such crimes just to cover their real crimes against Iraqis."

Mr Bakri spoke as he took part in a Cairo demonstration by about 50 Egyptian journalists and lawyers against human rights abuses committed by US-led forces in Iraq.

Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the two main satellite networks, aired carefully edited segments of the video. In Al-Arabiya's edit, a militant draws a knife and jerks Berg's torso to one side. The rest is not shown.

"The news story itself is strong enough," said Jihad Ballout, a spokesman for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television. "To show the actual beheading is out of the realm of decency."

Lebanon's private Al Hayat-LBC station led today's news bulletin with the video.

"We apologize to our viewers for not showing the entire tape because of the ugliness of the scene," the presenter said. Kuwait's state television broadcast the news of the execution late yesterday but did not air the video.

Egypt's leading daily, Al-Ahram, ignored the story today, while two other major pro-government newspapers, Al-Akhbar and Al-Gomhuria, ran agency reports on their inside pages and without photographs.

Ahmed Reda, an Al-Ahram editor who was on duty last night, said the news came too late for the paper to confirm the video's authenticity with the US government.

Berg's killing would receive "the coverage it deserves" in tomorrow's paper, Mr Reda said. "We had no reason not to publish it other than the time element."

Hussein Amin, a professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo, said the Egyptian pro-government papers' handling of the execution was political and appropriate.

"I think that the government does not want to show this on the front page as a main item because it shows a very poor - poor is not the proper word, disgusting maybe is the better word - example of revenge," he said.

"There is also the threat that it could be happening to other Americans. If they put it on the front page, [it could be seen as] favouring this kind of action."

Newspapers in Syria, where the government controls the press tightly, did not report the execution at all.

In Jordan, state television and radio reported Berg's killing last night, with television showing a still from the video. The mass circulation Al Rai newspaper published a report today of the execution on its inside page and with no picture.

None of the main newspapers in Iraq published the execution, but this might have been because it came late.

Most Lebanese newspapers, such as the left-wing As-Safir, published the report and a photograph of Berg sitting in front of the militants. The headline ran: "Al-Zarqawi slaughters an American to avenge Iraqi prisoners."

Five of Kuwait's seven dailies published the report with photographs on their front pages. The other two published brief reports. Al-Siyassah ran two photos, including one with a masked militant holding up Berg's severed head.

In many Arab newspapers, the killing received less play than the news of Washington's imposition of sanctions on Syria and the killing of six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City.